


A Reflection Bereft, Not Dark

by HSavinien



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Being Lost, Displacement, Emotional Hurt, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Injury, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani Needs a Hug, M/M, Minor Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Needs a Hug, POV Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, POV Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Parallel Universes, Post-Canon, Team Feels, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28900578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HSavinien/pseuds/HSavinien
Summary: Nicky always knows where Joe is. Maybe not precisely, geographically, but he always has a sense of “present” or “away” and “present” includes a general sense of where they are in relation to each other. There is no slipping out without the other noticing for them, any more than Nicky would absentmindedly lose track of his own arms or Joe misplace his head.But now there is an absence...
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 37
Kudos: 155





	1. Lost

**Author's Note:**

> This story is complete and will be posted chapter by chapter over the next week. The working title was "The distressing story," so, fair warning.

There is a hum in Niccolò’s ears as he comes back in, like a beehive. Behind the wall, ranks of computer boxes (and the fans to cool them) buzz bits of information back and forth. Andy and Booker play cards together sitting crosslegged on the floor, both cheating terribly. Nile heckles them, especially when Andy reaches over to flick Booker’s nose and make him sneeze to give herself a chance to look at his cards. Joe is…

?

Nicky always knows where Joe is. Maybe not precisely, geographically, but he always has a sense of “present” or “away” and “present” includes a general sense of where they are in relation to each other. There is no slipping out without the other noticing for them, any more than Nicky would absentmindedly lose track of his own arms or Joe misplace his head.

But now there is an absence where he should be. Nicky’s on alert, scanning the room. He turns back to check the corridor, but the doors are still closed, lights on the electronic pads the red of “locked”. Joe is not here and Nicky doesn’t know when he left or where he went.

“Andy,” he asks, “where’s Joe?” The tendons in his neck thrum in time to the computers.

“Hm?”

“Where did Joe go? When did he leave?”

“Who’s that?” Nile asks, staring at him quizzically.

“Yusuf? My. What?” Nicky’s unmoored, gaping at the other three, who look at him in concern. “Andy, where is my beloved, tied to me for a millennium? _Where is the other half of my soul, my heart, Yusuf al-Kaysani?_ ”

* * *

Someone is going mad and Nicky’s not sure whether he prefers to think that it is himself or the rest of them.

No, it is the rest of them. Which is bad, because Andy is a dangerous person even when she is completely stable and he loves them all and does not wish them to be so afflicted. But the idea that he has _imagined_ nearly a thousand years of overwhelming love is…incomprehensible. Where would he have had the idea of it from? How could he make up someone so wonderful and unprecedented as Joe?

"Andy," he says, and hears the waver in his own voice. "This is not possible. You found us _together._ You and Quỳnh traveled with us for over four hundred years before we lost her, then you and I and Yusuf for another three hundred before we found Booker, then we four another two hundred years before Nile."

" _Lost-_ " Andy says, eyes sharp and confused. 

"Booker?" And he forgot. Booker isn't supposed to be here. 

"Nick, Quỳnh's on reconnaissance in Milan with Lykon," Nile says. "What do you mean 'lost'?"

Nicky stares at them and sits, and puts his head in his hands, as if squeezing it will make the world make sense.

"When did I get a nickname?" Booker says, but Nicky can barely hear it over the ringing of his ears. 

"Niccolò," Andy says and he shudders at the gentleness in her voice. She doesn't touch him, but crouches beside him and puts her hands where he can see. "None of us remember this person you're missing. Quỳnh isn't lost. What else is not lining up with what you remember?"

"Lykon died," he says numbly. "I never met him. He stopped healing and died for the final time years before I was born."

"We can _do_ that?" Booker- no, this is Sebastien apparently, says behind him. 

"No," Andy says, voice too measured for calm. "That never happened here. No immortal I have met has ever lost their healing, and I know you tested that."

Nicky looks up at her and she's not looking at B- Sebastien, but at _him_ when she says it. "I have never tried to kill myself," he tells her quietly. 

She looks at him, eyes as old as oceans. "Hm."

Nile whistles. "Okay, so I know I'm the only big sci-fi fan here but, theory: you aren't going crazy, you didn't hit your head funny without any of us noticing, you're just not our Nick."

"I am Nicky," he tells her, because it's the second time she's called him that. He does not prefer it. 

"Huh. Yeah, okay. What kind of weapons do you use, Nicky?"

"Sniper rifle and long sword. Knife and handgun when necessary."

Andy leans back, like that of all things has staggered her. 

"Nick-y. The Niccolò I know hasn't touched a sword since guns became reliable."

He stares up at her. "If you have one here, I can show you that I am still in practice."

They do. He cannot blame Andy for the test. They are, all four, bewildered. 

After, Andy holds out her hand and he collapses into her arms in a sweaty hug. "You're not our Nick," she agrees. "And you fight like there should be another swordsman at your back."

He chokes on a sob and then Nile and Sebastien are there too, petting his back and hair. "You're not ours," Sebastien says kindly, "but we'll take care of you until we can figure out how to trade you back."

* * *

Yusuf leans against the buzzing computer banks and watches Nile try to palm cards while Andy teases her for clumsiness. "I can't believe you think that cheating at poker is a necessary skill for my immortal life," Nile grumbles, but she's smiling too. 

"You'll need to get a lot better before you try this on Booker," he calls over to her, laughing as Nile fumbles badly enough to send an ace tumbling on top of the pile of cards between them on the floor.

The door swishes open and Nicky comes through, voice grim as he says, "No change, boss."

"Nicky, please help," Joe says, still laughing. "Nile is so bad at cheating, I'm starting to wonder if Marines are the first soldiers in the world not to play cards." 

And there is a gun in his face with Nicky's eyes, cold as winter, behind it.


	2. Reeling

"Who are you and how did you get in? Where's Sebastien?"

Nicky shoots him in the shoulder. Nile hits Nicky from the side like a ton of bricks and Andy grabs his gun from his hand. Together they hold him down, kicking and squirming and eyes blazing confusion while Andy strips him of weapons. Joe grits his teeth, trying not to cry out as the shattered joint pieces itself back together, but he can feel tears dampening his beard and salting his lips. And Nicky is staring at him like a stranger has taken up residence behind his beloved's eyes, watching him heal. 

"What the  _ fuck,  _ Nicky," Nile says. 

"That's not Nicky," Joe says blankly, in the oldest Tunisian dialect he knows. The man stares at him with no sign of understanding. "You're not Nicky," he repeats in zenieze. 

"I am Niccolò di Genova," he says in the same language. "These women are Andromache the Scythian and Nile Freeman. I do not know you, though you seem to be like us. How do you know my tongue? Where is Sebastien le Livre? He was here when I left to check the corridor."

"Sebastien was exiled three months ago," Andy says tiredly.

* * *

It is a bad morning. 

Joe can feel himself floating, observing as Andy calls Copley and shuts down the mission with no more explanation than, "We're compromised. Nothing to erase, but we have to go to ground for a while."

He does not look at the man with Nicky's face. He is too unmoored already. His heart is lost and he didn't notice until afterwards, when it was too late to perhaps do something to stop it. He wipes his face and his shoulder and arm, puts the soiled shirt in a plastic bag in his pack to dispose of later, and pulls on a fresh t-shirt and one of Nicky's hoodies. He is chilled. 

He can feel the man watching him. 

"Okay," Nile says, businesslike, after zip tying the man's hands behind his back. "You don't have to believe us yet, but that guy is Joe, he's our teammate, and if you try to hurt him again, I will put you down harder, healing factor or not. If you can promise that you won't hurt anyone who isn't trying to hurt you, we'll let you loose when we get somewhere safer. Yes, I'm Nile and that's Andy, but I don't think you're the Niccolò I know. What do you want to be called?"

"Nick is fine," he says and he sounds almost like Nicky on a bad day, when emotions are hard and Nicky needs to be cooking or doing something with his hands that isn't related to violence. It is not Joe's problem. 

He works mechanically, packing the weapons and snacks they'd scattered around the room while waiting for the ship to dock. They'll sort it out another time. Or Copley will pull in someone else to do it. 

"Why does the boss have a bruise on her cheek?" Not-Nicky says suddenly. 

Nile falters at that, Joe sees it from the corner of his eye. 

"Because she has lost her healing, her immortality," Joe tells his backpack. "Everything that lives must die eventually."

"She is  _ dying?" _ Nick says, and his voice is cracked, full of horror and loss and rawness like need. 

"I mean, not right this minute," Nile says. "Just, you know, at the end of a normal lifespan, probably. If she doesn't forget and try to jump out of an airplane without a parachute again."

And Joe has to leave, has to be not here, grabs the backpack and his gun and leaves Andy and kind, young Nile and this stranger with Nicky's face and goes to the corridor to put the hood up and tuck his nose into the softness of the hoodie and breathe in the scent of Nicky's sweat and skin. How did they get this stranger, who is like Nicky but wrong, angry and hardened, in return for his love? 

* * *

"So, you were still a Crusader, right?" Nile asks. She squats next to him, with Sebastien leaning back against the wall, babysitting them. 

"Yes," he says. "It was a terrible thing that I believed was righteous and I committed evil with my kinsmen. I was taught to hate the people out of whom would spring my greatest love."

"No shit, you met your Yusuf there?"

"We killed each other there. Over and over, until he, more great-hearted and wiser, called peace. I learned to do better, spend my life on protecting the disenfranchised instead of serving a king or church that saw lives as numbers and profit, not people."

"I think it took Nick a longer time to get over the religious fervor. It feels like he's still seeking atonement," Nile says quietly.

Nicky presses his lips together. He doesn’t think he would like the Niccolò that Nile and Sebastien know. 

"Yusuf's a good guy, it sounds like," Sebastien says. He is easier than Booker, less damaged. "We get along?"

Nicky sighs. What kindness would there be in sharing recent troubles? "You are like brothers. You watch football together, kick a ball around the plaza. You talk about poetry and make fun of each other's taste in novels. He laughs at me when I lose bets with you."

"I like him already." Sebastien grins. 

"And Nile, he loves to have you as a younger sister. He takes you to art museums and you talk about queer people of color in history. He is much more fashionable than I and enjoys your thoughts on clothing and music."

She's soft eyed, barely wounded by the world. No, stupid, he knows better. If she's come to them the same way their Nile did, grown up the same way, as a Black woman in America, then she is soft because she chooses not to let her hurts harden her. He is fiercely sorry that she doesn't have Joe to help. Perhaps Lykon does, or Quỳnh.


	3. Vertigo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early chapter today!

Nile and Sebastien's company does not provide as much distraction from his distress as they perhaps hope. He declines to join a resumed card game and waves away the bottled water that Sebastien holds out. Nile offers to tell him what she knows of alternate universes from stories, but they will be no more reliable than all the stories of immortals (who are not them). False hope will hurt him worse than simply waiting. Probably. He retreats to a corner, sits with his back tucked into it, head tipped against the wall so that he can watch the room. There is not likely to be any danger to him, but he needs to watch even so.

Joe is  _ missing, _ or Nicky is, but the result is the same. There is an aching loss only growing in his gut and it has brown eyes so warm and essential to him that Nicky's heart is freezing in their absence. He can feel himself icing over, like he's losing everything besides his sorrow, which will not help him escape this wrong world. He tongues at the sharp edge of a tooth until he tastes blood. The sting of the cut fades as quickly as ever, so that at least he has not lost. He needs all the time he can get, as he will be spending all the rest of his existence searching until he can find his way home.

Andy returns after a while, boots loud on the decking. “We don’t know what happened. We don’t know how to reverse it,” she tells them. “So we’re stealing the ship.”

“And I get to fix the problems that’s going to cause?” Sebastien asks, already pulling out his mobile. 

“Yep. Buy it if you really have to and can figure out a couple of masks-”

“Shell companies-”

“...Shells to run the purchase through.” She shrugs. “It happened here. Best to cut down on the variables.” Andy turns to look at Nicky. “Tell me where you remember being last.”

“On a ship like this one. Maybe the same one. We were in the North Atlantic.” He gives his report automatically. 

* * *

It is the same ship in the same waters, the same mission. Strange how things should connect across their different histories. Nicky does not like this whim of fate. One inexplicable miracle has made nearly the whole of his existence possible. That a second should strip him of his love, his family, the better part of his joy in life, seems like the worst imaginable punishment for his sins. He had believed himself doing more good than evil, but perhaps he was wrong.

The familiar rhythm of the  _ Ave _ plays in his head, the pattern worn by years of recitation.  _ Ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae… _

It is not yet his hour of death. He can fight still. He will return to Joe, however long it takes. This Andy and Nile and Sebastien are not  _ his _ friends, but they are still allies. They will help, and they will have friends and contacts.

“Meet us at Alesund,” Andromache says into her phone, purposeful and warm.

And oh, that was something he had not considered. She is speaking to Quỳnh; he can hear it in her voice. It has a particular joy that he has not heard from Andy in centuries.

Nicky is not prepared to see a Quỳnh who is not  _ his _ world’s Quỳnh, knowing she’ll still be lost if- when he gets home. But to sacrifice the chance and to admit to Andromache that he had fled seeing her, could tell her nothing of the phenomenon that is Quỳnh in the 21st century? How could he? How could he deny her news of her love, even a different Quỳnh, a never-lost Quỳnh? He misses his sister, he has for five hundred years. This Quỳnh will not be her, but she’s a version of her nevertheless.

Nicky hates this world on his own account, and Joe’s, but he’s glad that Quỳnh is in it.

“Lykon and Quỳnh will have lodging ready for us in Alesund. Are you going to be…” Andy does not say “all right”, she knows. “Able to deal with that?” she finishes.

He shrugs. “I will manage myself.”

* * *

Joe has to breathe more slowly. He counts breaths - in and hold and out. How did they get this cuckoo bird who is not his love? How do they trade him back? The vision opens up before him for a moment of this man beside them forever instead of Nicky, and the noise that comes out of Joe sounds like dying. 

Andy joins him in the corridor, making occasional agreeing grumbles at her mobile. She slides down the wall, presses her shoulder into his, and when he grasps for her free hand, clutching it tight, she laces her fingers with his. When she hangs up, Andy still doesn’t turn to him.

“Copley’s having the ship quarantined at Alesund,” she says. “Might as well keep him in the place it happened while we try to find a fix. Nile’s getting him to talk. Do you want to hear any of it?”

Joe shrugs helplessly. “No. But what if something he says is useful for trading him back?”

Andy laughs, rough and raw as he feels. “Mostly it’s useful for hurting me, but you never know.”

“Oh, Andy.” He leans into her, a new fear creeping under his skin.

“His Andromache still has Quỳnh and Lykon.” She shrugs. “She has Sebastien, Nile, and him, all five hale and more or less functional. And she’s not dying. Lucky fucker.”

“But not me.”

“That is the area where we’re winning, yeah.” Andy kisses the side of his head. “You’re priceless to us, Joe, priceless to me.”

He knows she means it, but…

Andy jostles him. “Lykon never died. This isn’t somehow a trade of you for Quỳnh, it’s an entirely different world. Stop it.” Her mouth is sad and tired, but her eyes are clear.


	4. Reconnaissance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was shoveling, sorry for the delay.

Joe buries himself in Nicky's hoodie, but follows Andy back anyway. The man watches them when they come in and keeps reciting his history to Nile, who is taking notes. There are differences, so many, with six of them in action instead of four (and a half, Booker can count a little). But even though broad strokes of history remain the same, there are differences. How Joe would love to see their Haiti, never crushed under the weight of the debt Europe claimed for the enslaved people who took their freedom. 

"Go back," Andy says. "To the witch trial." Joe winces. 

The man nods, uncomplaining. "Andromache and Quỳnh were rescuing people from the mobs and were captured. When the witch-finders discovered their healing, they were accused themselves. Quỳnh was locked in a-"

"We know," Andy says tightly. "Please skip to the ship."

He shrugs. "Lykon was backup. He had earlier established himself on the docks and got onto the ship as a sailor. When they threw her in, he jumped in after and broke the locks with a prybar. They came up under the ship and clung to it until they were in sight of land and could swim to shore. Andromache had broken free by that point. We all met back in Naples."

"Where were you?" Nile asks.

"Ministering in a prison in Spain, gathering information about the Inquisition." 

"Never mind that. Can you tell me where Lykon found her?" Andy asks. It isn't hope in her voice, just grim resignation. 

"Not with any kind of precision. It was five hundred years ago and I was not there."

She nods and turns away and Joe aches for both her and himself. "Is she happy?" Andy asks quietly. 

"Yes," the man says. The kindness of the word almost makes him sound like Nicky.

Joe settles beside Nile and doesn't look at the man. "Do we have a plan, boss?" 

She shrugs. "We don't know how it happened in the first place. You didn't die recently, did you?" she asks. 

"No."

"Nicky hasn't either," Nile points out. "That I know of."

"No," Joe agrees. 

"You can kill me, if you think it will help," he says. He doesn't sound bothered by it, just weary. "A...reset."

"No!" Nile says, disturbed. 

"Maybe," Andy says. "Joe, Nile, take a walk."

* * *

Joe and Nile don't speak until they reach the bowels of the ship. The engine thrums beneath their feet and occasional passing footsteps from the crew ring on the other side of the walls. Nile twitches the first few times, then ignores them. 

"I hope Copley can get them sent home when we dock," she says absently. 

"Don't want them hanging around," Joe agrees. “Quarantining the ship was not a bad plan on his part.”

"Yeah." Nile grabs his arm and he stops. "Joe, I'm sorry. I want to get Nicky back, I know this is bad for you, I know I can't even understand how bad, but just killing Nick feels really gross. I've never killed one of you guys myself or gotten you killed on  _ purpose." _

He pats her hand absently. "You won't have to."

_ "Joe. _ That's not the main part of the problem."

"It will have to do, Nile," he says and she flinches at whatever is in his eyes. "I'm sorry. I’m sorry, dear one. We have all killed each other when needed before, on a job. We have killed each other on purpose and by accident and by foolishness. Andy and Quỳnh each killed me once for snoring too near them. Andy will not hesitate to do it, if it can restore them to their proper places, and she has the skill to kill him without causing much pain at all. You know he will heal.

"Unless this is the time he doesn't, and it's our fault."

Joe shrugs helplessly. "I have no other ideas. He has consented."

* * *

They discuss solutions as the ship heads for Alesund, but everyone is flying blind. Nicky can only shrug at Nile, whose brainstorming involves the plots of several films, apparently. He was on the right ship in the right world, and then he was not and he was parted from the light of his life, scrambling for footing in darkness and confusion.

Sebastien looks over the passport that Nicky was carrying when he was lost, and winces at it. “Either my counterpart is bad at his job or they use different formatting on your side,” he says. “I think I have a spare of Nick’s. Let me see.” He digs in a hidden pocket of his pack, pulls out a red Repubblica Italiana EU passport, and tosses it over. “Make it easy for you.”

Nicky pages through it absently. The design is slightly different. The man in the photo looks tired. Nico Barese - he casts a narrow look at Sebastien for that and it’s almost heartening, feeling a tiny bit of indignation instead of just all-consuming distress - is supposedly 39, a good inch shorter than him, and travels frequently to Germany and Egypt. It will do well enough.

When Andy orders him to eat a protein bar, he does so mechanically.

“Has anybody come up with any ideas?” she asks.

Nile mutters something about a mirror and Nicky knows that story, that was Alice, but there had been no mirrors on the ship that he noticed, not anywhere he was.

Nicky shrugs. “You might kill me. If everything else mends itself to how it was before when we die, perhaps I would return to my proper place.”

Nile looks a bit nauseated, but Andy nods and Sebastien shrugs. “It might work,” Andy says. “If not, we’ll try something else.”

“Maybe if you fall asleep?” Sebastien asks. “Though it might have to be when both of you are asleep to work. We find each other in dreams, after all. Maybe you can find your way home through them."

“A romantic idea,” Nicky agrees. If dying does not help, he will try it.


	5. Calibration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nicky meets Quỳnh and Lykon. Unrelated, very matter-of-fact violence in this chapter.

They aren't far from port, so Andy decides that they will wait until they reach land and Quỳnh and Lykon. Nicky doesn't have a good reason to disagree besides his own chafing at this world. 

The engine noises eventually change. The motion of the deck under their feet settles, but they wait another hour for the crew to clear out before heading out the hatch themselves. 

Two figures wave at them from the dock, beside a nondescript van. When they reach the ground, Andy swoops Quỳnh into a hug for a moment, then releases her to cup Lykon's cheek. Quỳnh ambushes Sebastien, pinching him. "I heard you bought us a ship,  _ frate. _ Will you name it after me?"

"Is 'Menace to Society' a legal ship name?" he asks, laughing. "I'll have to check."

Nicky wonders, briefly, what Andy said to them. Lykon hugs Nile, careful not to muss her hair, then releases her to approach Nicky. "Well," he says, offering his hand. "You're as quiet as our Nick. Nice to meet you."

"And you," Nicky says. Lykon is a very beautiful man, and looks younger than all of them but Nile, though of course he is nothing of the sort. "I would have preferred not to, all the same." 

"Understandable." Lykon shrugs. He has an easy manner, an open face, but as old as he is, Nicky can only imagine what danger that covers. This man is a warrior like them; he is likely the deadliest besides Andromache and Quỳnh. His hand is warm and as calloused as Nicky’s.

"Nicky says we can kill him to try putting him back where he should be," Andy says. "Did you find us a good place for it?"

Quỳnh shrugs. “As long as you don’t mind using the bath. Clean-up will be a pain otherwise.”

She smiles at Nicky, then her face creases in concern. “Have you broken him somehow, or did he come like this?”

He realizes that he is weeping and turns to wipe his face and stop seeing her, glowing with health and good humor,  _ there, _ hair a joyous banner. “Scusami.”

“He’s having a bad day,” Sebastien says behind him and Nicky chokes on a laugh, because only on this day, in this situation, could seeing Quỳnh happy and alive make his day more difficult.

“You are not Nick,” she says, and he feels her beside him. 

“No,” he agrees. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t mind. I’m sure he’s fine. He usually is. Can you tell me why seeing me made you cry?” 

He glances at her out of the corner of his eye and nods. “We lost you in my world. Our Quỳnh. She was taken by the witchfinders, and caged, and dropped in the sea. We could not find her. We searched for years. I think Andy still searches when she is alone, though she forbade us from it.”

Quỳnh shudders. “They tried here. Lykon released me. He owed me for pulling him out of a tiger pit a few years before. Have you been eaten? It’s the worst.”

He turns, grasping her hands. “Can you remember where it was? Where the ship left you? Could you mark a map for me?”

She pulls away, though gently. “I don’t know, maybe.”

“Please. Please try. For the love you bear Andy and yourself, even a world away.”

* * *

Quỳnh and Lykon squabble over an oceanographic map that Nile pulled up for them as Andy drives them to the safehouse. Nicky listens, half in hope and half in despair, as they mark several spots, then argue themselves out of each one. They all unload and Nicky finds himself in the kitchen with nothing to do, as he cannot fill Nick’s missing part in their choreography. Nile tells him to make himself at home while they unpack, so he rifles through the cupboards and refrigerator. There are bananas sagging into blackness on the counter. He mashes them into eggs, butter, demerara sugar, then folds it into flour, sodium bicarbonate and salt, dumps it in a loaf tin, and slides it into the oven. He sets the kitchen timer. If he is lucky, he will not be around to eat it.

The kitchen begins to smell sweet. Quỳnh comes in with printout of the map and slaps it down on the counter in front of him. Three places are marked. “I make no promises,” she tells him. “But these are our best guesses.”

“A thousand thanks,” he says. “For Andy and for all of us.” He clutches it for a moment before forcing himself to smooth the paper back out and fold it neatly for his pocket. He tucks it beside his own passport and leaves the spare on the counter for Sebastien.

“Do you want me to kill you now?”

“If you would.”

* * *

Joe and Nile return to find Andy frowning at the interloper. 

“I don’t like your reasoning,” she says. “We change so much for the better by doing this.”

He shrugs. “I have done so. I am tired. Perhaps it will rub off, perhaps it won’t. I lose nothing that will be missed.”

“I think you’re wrong, but I don’t know your world. If you’re certain.”

“Yes,” he says. “Thank you.”

Andy looks up at them. “I’ll kill him when we offload the crew. Anything you need to say or do before then?”

“How much time have we got?” Nile asks.

“About twenty minutes until harbor. Maybe ninety ‘til we’re clear.”

Nile sits beside him, cuts him free, and talks about the things she’s excited to do and see, the places she wants to visit.

Joe understands what they walked into. Nile seems to have an inkling. She sticks with him, even manages to pull a smile out of him. 

They dock with a rumble of quieting engines, then listen as the crew leaves. 

The man looks up at Andy. "Time?"

"Sure."

They find a spot with access to the water for cleanup. Andy nods to him, and slits his throat. 


	6. Testing

It doesn't work. 

Of course it doesn't; that would be too straightforward for today. He dies with hardly a shudder, blood mixing with the seawater for a few minutes, then gasps and jerks, eyes opening and fixing on Joe with a look of such disappointment that he knows Nicky is still lost. 

He doesn't know how this Niccolò ended up so much different than Nicky, if Joe's presence and love caused such a divergence or if some other circumstance of fate tipped the balance. How could a man - fortunate enough to know all their family,  _ and _ Lykon,  _ and _ to keep Quỳnh - want to die badly enough to hope Andy's mortality would rub off in a deathblow?

But then, he never understood that Booker wanted to die badly enough to betray them either. He grabs a mop and swabs the deck clean of the few blood spatters that went astray.

“Nile, can you grab something for us to eat in town?” Andy asks, wiping her knife clean and putting it away. “There’s kroner in the backpack.”

“I can go,” Joe offers.

She looks at him, and looks almost as tired as he feels. Nile takes the backpack from him gingerly. 

“It’s okay,” Nile says, “You guys talk this through together. I’ll be back soon.”

* * *

Andy waits until Nile heads out. Not-Nicky sits, leans his arms on the railing, and lets his feet dangle over the water as he stares out at the harbor. They retreat down the deck a ways, leaving him to it.

“Joe, I know you’re hurting, but I need you to think with your head and not your heart,” Andy says. “I need help reconstructing this. Did  _ anything _ strange happen today before the switch? What is the last thing you remember of Nicky?”

It isn’t much. This was another day in their long lives, another job. Nicky went to look down the server corridor with a tiny smile and a flick of a glance when Joe’s fingertip brushed his wrist, and when he came back it wasn’t Nicky.

“He’s not Nicky,” Andy repeats after he says it again, probably for the fourth time. 

Joe nods. “He’s not Booker either,” he points out. 

She blinks at him, then shrugs. “Yeah. Different broken edges. Similar result. Not what I was thinking about.”

“Oh?” 

“He’s not Nicky, but he’s tied to Nicky somehow, or they wouldn’t have gotten mixed up like this.”

“We don’t know that.”

“We don’t know shit,” she agrees. “But I think it’s something.”

“We need to find the...connecting points, then?” Joe says.

“Where the change might have happened. What might have triggered it, if we can, but I’m less worried about that.”

“I’m not!”

“Even if we get him back without finding out?”

“I suppose.” He thinks for a moment. “So we need to keep the ship, in case that’s the connection.”

“Yeah. I had Copley check our location as soon as we realized it had happened, so we have a rough idea of geographical points of reference, in case it’s that.”

Joe nods. “Like Bermuda.”

“Right. The thing I don’t know how to manage is if it’s a state of mind or something internal to him.”

“I think not,” Joe says, confident in that at least. “This man doesn’t reason like Nicky or believe in the same things. He’s like a relative; similar background but different choices.”

“I don’t think they’re as different as they seem,” Andy says. “But that one’s a longshot anyway.”

Nile returns and passes out vegetarian polse and Norwegian waffles to everyone and they eat without the appreciation that the food really deserves. They reconvene in the room behind the servers to be out of sight of any possible observers and go back and forth some more, prodding at the question from all angles. The man who isn’t Nicky contributes a little, answering the questions put to him. 

“Have we tried just sending him back down the server hallway yet?” Nile asks, staring at it, after another round of fanciful what-ifs (solar flares?).

* * *

Nicky obliges Quỳnh and leans over the bathtub so that the blood will not make a mess. Andy and Lykon watch from the door and he nods to them and barely feels Quỳnh’s blade before the cold takes him away.

When he wakes, spitting blood and gasping, they are still there. He is still displaced.

The simple answer was too much to hope for after all.

Sebastien brings him a slice of banana bread and Nile passes around mugs of tea as they sit at the table, all six of them.

“So,” Nile says after a gloomy minute. “Sebastien suggested you try dreaming your way home?”

“Yes.” Nicky eats some banana bread. It’s warm from the oven, crumbling for being cut too quickly. “I could try to fall asleep now, but I don’t know if I would need to wait for your Nick to do the same.”

Lykon hums thoughtfully. “Dreams are important. Perhaps it will work. You haven’t had cause to sleep since the shift.”

“The thing is,” Quỳnh says, “It doesn’t sound like either of you were dreaming when the switch happened. That wasn’t the catalyst.”

“I was awake,” he agrees. “But the door to enter may not be the door to leave.”

“Some sort of one-way road system bullshit,” Nile says wisely. She is from Chicago after all.

“Yes, but there’s no reason to assume the way back is blocked until we’ve tested it,” Quỳnh points out. 

“I defer to your wisdom, elder sister, but I don’t know how to make that test.”

“Ái chà, you’re as formal as Nick was back in the day,” she says fondly and shrugs. “Anyway. You went down the corridor. You came out in the wrong world. Why not send you down it again?”

Andy drops her face into her hands. “We didn’t try that, did we.”

“No,” Nicky agrees, head spinning. “We did not.”

“Back to the ship then?” Nile asks.

“Field trip,” Sebastien says laconically. “Who’s going?”


	7. Family

They all pile back in the van. Nicky can feel himself vibrating and tries not to lean too close to Nile in case it bothers her. She slings an arm around him anyway. “Don’t worry about it,” she says quietly. “I’m imagining what Quỳnh would be like if she was separated from Andy and it’s awful.”

He chuckles, unsteady. “It is not good the other way around either, sorellina. I only hope the map can help.”

She digs a knuckle into his ribs and he flinches and blinks at her in confusion. “Hey. You wait. We’ll get you home and then you and your guy and Andy and Sebastien and my no-doubt charming and beautiful counterpart can go find Quỳnh.”

“I should have asked before - Lykon and Quỳnh, they are good siblings to you, right?” he asks, suddenly desperate to make sure. “I wish you could meet Yusuf, he loves you so dearly, but I am glad you have them, if they make your time more joyful.”

“They’re great,” she reassures him, grinning. “Quỳnh,” she calls, “This gun empty-”

“Yeet!” Quỳnh yells back at her from the front seat. 

Lykon groans and starts kicking the back of her seat. “Stop that, it’s not funny anymore! Nile, I thought you were going to stop showing her Vines.”

“I promised nothing!” she laughs. And oh, seeing them like this, alive and happy and laughing and loving her makes him ache. He misses home and his family, misses Quỳnh, misses Joe like air.

* * *

Joe stares at Nile and then the corridor. “I’ve been through there twice. You and Andy once each, at least. Is it only a magic door for Nicky, then?” It's too much to hope for.

“I don’t know, Joe. I don’t know if it  _ will  _ work,” Nile says, throwing her hands up. “It’s  _ magic. _ We  _ magically come back to life _ and heal when we’re hurt until suddenly we don’t. I don’t know the rules.”

“Well, it is a connection point if they’re on the same ship. Nick,” Andy says. “You want to try it?”

“Might as well,” the man says tiredly. 

Andy leans into him, embraces him as if he's one of their family, and there’s a tiny looseness to his posture that wasn’t there before when she pulls away. “Talk to Andy when you get back. Take a vacation if you need to. Wander until you find a balm for your heart.”

Joe looks him in the eye for the first time since they figured him out. “Find a nice man and let yourself be loved,” he tells Nick softly. “If I were gone, I would want Nicky to do the same.” Nick looks wondering, and Joe realizes they never told him. 

“You be good to other Nile,” she instructs him, helping him up. “She’s missing two brothers, even if she never knew one, even if she has different people.”

For Nile, he smiles. “I will do better than I have. I would not have her want for anything.”

* * *

The ship is as empty as they left it. Andy opens the hidden hatch to the room and they troop in together. Quỳnh and Lykon look around in vague curiosity, but it has not become any more interesting. It is a space that only exists to lead to the corridor with the buzzing computers behind its doors. 

He embraces them all. Lykon and Sebastien, then Nile, Andy, and finally Quỳnh. She pulls him down to kiss his forehead. Nicky checks his pocket again for the map and stares at the corridor for a moment. 

“Do you think it will work?" he asks Andy quietly. 

She shrugs. "Got me, kid."

"Nothing to lose by trying," Nile says.

Only another measure of hope. Only another piece of his heart congealing in his chest. "Thank you for your kindness," he says. "I hope never to see you again."

"If it doesn't work, there's still the dream thing," Sebastien says with his so-odd optimism.

"Give Andromache my love," Lykon calls, wrapping his arms around Andy and Quỳnh.

"Go pull my sister out of the sea," Quỳnh says. 

"Nicky," Andy says. "Time."

He nods. "Yes, boss."

His boots sound dull on the deck. The machine hum of the computers grows as he crosses the threshold into the corridor and he does not look back. He had walked up the corridor like this, checking each door to make sure it was still secured, blinking red: locked. Nicky reaches the end of the corridor and turns around.

* * *

Joe watches him walk through the doorway, eyes forward and shoulders square. Andy has set them at an angle to the corridor; they can see only a few feet down it. He’s not sure if that’s a kindness or not. Nick’s quiet steps fade down the hall until the only thing Joe can hear is the rasp of his own breaths.

The returning footsteps are just as deliberate. As they come closer, they speed up just a little. 

He emerges. The familiar, solemn face breaks into a glory of emotion and Nicky is  _ Nicky _ and in his arms and Joe sinks to the floor, clutching him and speechless.

“-my own, my Yusuf, I  _ lost  _ you, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I left you, my heart was freezing for want of you, ya hayati, I’ll burn this cursed ship to the waterline, oh my love,” Nicky says, pouring relief in a stream into his ear, grasping Joe so tight he thinks his ribs will crack. Joe breathes in the scent of him and feels his own heart shatter the layer of stone that has been calcifying around it.

Andy sighs and Joe barely hears it, but Nicky gasps and pulls away far enough to pat his shirt, fumbling for his pocket. “Andy. Their Quỳnh, she gave me a map. She couldn’t promise, but there’s a chance. There’s a  _ chance.” _

She chokes on air and tackles them both, and Nile follows, embracing them and beaming. Nicky returned, and he bears hope with him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just not cut out for sustained angst. Hope you enjoyed the journey!


End file.
